4-Step Approach to Mapping and Securing Your Organization's Most Critical Assets

You’re probably familiar with the term “critical assets”. These are the technology assets within your company's IT infrastructure that are essential to the functioning of your organization. If anything happens to these assets, such as application servers, databases, or privileged identities, the ramifications to your security posture can be severe.  But is every technology asset considered

DevOps Dilemma: How Can CISOs Regain Control in the Age of Speed?

Introduction The infamous Colonial pipeline ransomware attack (2021) and SolarWinds supply chain attack (2020) were more than data leaks; they were seismic shifts in cybersecurity. These attacks exposed a critical challenge for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs): holding their ground while maintaining control over cloud security in the accelerating world of DevOps.

Attack Surface Management vs. Vulnerability Management

Attack surface management (ASM) and vulnerability management (VM) are often confused, and while they overlap, they’re not the same. The main difference between attack surface management and vulnerability management is in their scope: vulnerability management checks a list of known assets, while attack surface management assumes you have unknown assets and so begins with discovery. Let’s look at

CTEM 101 - Go Beyond Vulnerability Management with Continuous Threat Exposure Management

In a world of ever-expanding jargon, adding another FLA (Four-Letter Acronym) to your glossary might seem like the last thing you’d want to do. But if you are looking for ways to continuously reduce risk across your environment while making significant and consistent improvements to security posture, in our opinion, you probably want to consider establishing a Continuous Threat Exposure

What is Exposure Management and How Does it Differ from ASM?

Startups and scales-ups are often cloud-first organizations and rarely have sprawling legacy on-prem environments. Likewise, knowing the agility and flexibility that cloud environments provide, the mid-market is predominantly running in a hybrid state, partly in the cloud but with some on-prem assets. While there has been a bit of a backswing against the pricing and lock-in presented when using

Benefits of Ingesting Data from Amazon Inspector into Cisco Vulnerability Management

Co-authored by Tejas Sheth, Sr. Security Specialist, Amazon Web Services – AISPL.

Risk-based Vulnerability Management (RBVM) represents a strategic approach to cyber security that focuses on… Read more on Cisco Blogs

NIS2 compliance for industrial networks: Are you ready?

Since the European Union (EU) signed the second version of the Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive in December 2022, there has been a real frenzy all around Europe about it. NIS2 is now… Read more on Cisco Blogs

SaaS Compliance through the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity framework is one of the world's most important guidelines for securing networks. It can be applied to any number of applications, including SaaS.  One of the challenges facing those tasked with securing SaaS applications is the different settings found in each application. It makes it difficult to develop a

How Nation-State Actors Target Your Business: New Research Exposes Major SaaS Vulnerabilities

With many of the highly publicized 2023 cyber attacks revolving around one or more SaaS applications, SaaS has become a cause for genuine concern in many boardroom discussions. More so than ever, considering that GenAI applications are, in fact, SaaS applications. Wing Security (Wing), a SaaS security company, conducted an analysis of 493 SaaS-using companies in Q4 of 2023. Their study

Raspberry Robin Malware Upgrades with Discord Spread and New Exploits

The operators of Raspberry Robin are now using two new one-day exploits to achieve local privilege escalation, even as the malware continues to be refined and improved to make it stealthier than before. This means that "Raspberry Robin has access to an exploit seller or its authors develop the exploits themselves in a short period of time," Check Point said in a report this

Wazuh in the Cloud Era: Navigating the Challenges of Cybersecurity

Cloud computing has innovated how organizations operate and manage IT operations, such as data storage, application deployment, networking, and overall resource management. The cloud offers scalability, adaptability, and accessibility, enabling businesses to achieve sustainable growth. However, adopting cloud technologies into your infrastructure presents various cybersecurity risks and

Critical JetBrains TeamCity On-Premises Flaw Exposes Servers to Takeover - Patch Now

JetBrains is alerting customers of a critical security flaw in its TeamCity On-Premises continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) software that could be exploited by threat actors to take over susceptible instances. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-23917, carries a CVSS rating of 9.8 out of 10, indicative of its severity. "The vulnerability may enable an unauthenticated

Why the Right Metrics Matter When it Comes to Vulnerability Management

How’s your vulnerability management program doing? Is it effective? A success? Let’s be honest, without the right metrics or analytics, how can you tell how well you’re doing, progressing, or if you’re getting ROI? If you’re not measuring, how do you know it’s working? And even if you are measuring, faulty reporting or focusing on the wrong metrics can create blind spots and make it harder to

52% of Serious Vulnerabilities We Find are Related to Windows 10

We analyzed 2,5 million vulnerabilities we discovered in our customer’s assets. This is what we found. Digging into the data The dataset we analyze here is representative of a subset of clients that subscribe to our vulnerability scanning services. Assets scanned include those reachable across the Internet, as well as those present on internal networks. The data includes findings for network

Atlassian Releases Critical Software Fixes to Prevent Remote Code Execution

Atlassian has released software fixes to address four critical flaws in its software that, if successfully exploited, could result in remote code execution. The list of vulnerabilities is below - CVE-2022-1471 (CVSS score: 9.8) - Deserialization vulnerability in SnakeYAML library that can lead to remote code execution in multiple products CVE-2023-22522 (CVSS score

The Importance of Continuous Security Monitoring for a Robust Cybersecurity Strategy

In 2023, the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million. Beyond the immediate financial loss, there are long-term consequences like diminished customer trust, weakened brand value, and derailed business operations. In a world where the frequency and cost of data breaches are skyrocketing, organizations are coming face-to-face with a harsh reality: traditional cybersecurity

Critical Flaws Discovered in Veeam ONE IT Monitoring Software – Patch Now

Veeam has released security updates to address four flaws in its ONE IT monitoring and analytics platform, two of which are rated critical in severity. The list of vulnerabilities is as follows - CVE-2023-38547 (CVSS score: 9.9) - An unspecified flaw that can be leveraged by an unauthenticated user to gain information about the SQL server connection Veeam ONE uses to access its configuration

How to Keep Your Business Running in a Contested Environment

When organizations start incorporating cybersecurity regulations and cyber incident reporting requirements into their security protocols, it's essential for them to establish comprehensive plans for preparation, mitigation, and response to potential threats. At the heart of your business lies your operational technology and critical systems. This places them at the forefront of cybercriminal

Act Now: VMware Releases Patch for Critical vCenter Server RCE Vulnerability

VMware has released security updates to address a critical flaw in the vCenter Server that could result in remote code execution on affected systems. The issue, tracked as CVE-2023-34048 (CVSS score: 9.8), has been described as an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the implementation of the DCE/RPC protocol. "A malicious actor with network access to vCenter Server may trigger an out-of-bounds

Essential Guide to Cybersecurity Compliance

SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, Cyber Essentials – all the security frameworks and certifications today are an acronym soup that can make even a compliance expert’s head spin. If you’re embarking on your compliance journey, read on to discover the differences between standards, which is best for your business, and how vulnerability management can aid compliance. What is cybersecurity compliance?

Modernizing Vulnerability Management: The Move Toward Exposure Management

Managing vulnerabilities in the constantly evolving technological landscape is a difficult task. Although vulnerabilities emerge regularly, not all vulnerabilities present the same level of risk. Traditional metrics such as CVSS score or the number of vulnerabilities are insufficient for effective vulnerability management as they lack business context, prioritization, and understanding of

Google Launches New Cybersecurity Initiatives to Strengthen Vulnerability Management

Google on Thursday outlined a set of initiatives aimed at improving the vulnerability management ecosystem and establishing greater transparency measures around exploitation. "While the notoriety of zero-day vulnerabilities typically makes headlines, risks remain even after they're known and fixed, which is the real story," the company said in an announcement. "Those risks span everything from

Patch Where it Hurts: Effective Vulnerability Management in 2023

A recently published Security Navigator report data shows that businesses are still taking 215 days to patch a reported vulnerability. Even for critical vulnerabilities, it generally takes more than 6 months to patch. Good vulnerability management is not about being fast enough in patching all potential breaches. It's about focusing on the real risk using vulnerability prioritization to correct

Kenna.VM Premier: Accelerate Vulnerability Management with Cisco Talos Intel and Remediation Analytics

New level unlocked. The next step for Kenna.VM users who are maturing their risk-based vulnerability management program is Kenna.VM Premier—and it’s live. 

The Cisco Kenna team is excited to release a new tier of the Kenna Security platform designed specifically for customers or prospects that have reached a point of maturity in which they can and want to do more with their vulnerability management program.

In addition to the existing Kenna features and functionality you know and love, the new Kenna.VM Premier tier includes:

• In-depth and actionable remediation scoring (New!)  
• Zero-day vulnerability intelligence, powered by Cisco Talos (New!) 
• Access to Kenna’s vulnerability intelligence via an API or user interface (UI) 

We’re particularly excited about the new features that are debuting with this tier. So, let’s take a closer look at everything that’s included.

Remediation scoring 

On the Kenna.VM homepage, a new metric will appear at the top right corner (Figure 1). The Remediation Score, as this measurement is known, quantifies how well an organization is addressing risk overall.  

The Remediation Score itself encompasses four key measurements (Figure 2), which may sound familiar to you if you’ve been reading any of the Prioritization to Prediction reports produced by Kenna and the Cyentia Institute:  

• • Coverage: Of all vulnerabilities that should be remediated, what percentage was correctly identified for remediation?  
  • Efficiency: Of all vulnerabilities identified for remediation, what percentage should have been remediated? 
  • Capacity: What is the average proportion of open vulnerabilities that were closed in a given period? 

• Velocity: What is the speed and progress of remediation?  

These new remediation insights will allow organizations to shift away from relying on just the Risk Score itself as a measurement to assess the performance of remediation teams. While many organizations opt to use the Risk Score in this manner, there are inherent problems with evaluating performance based on the Risk Score—particularly for mature programs. A Risk Score can spike at any moment due to a suddenly high-risk vulnerability—a spike that isn’t a reflection on the remediation team themselves. And as organizations mature, they’re likely to reach a ‘steady state’ with their Risk Score, which makes it a difficult metric to use to measure progress.

Ultimately, these performance metrics will help customers better understand what areas of their remediation efforts are doing well and which might need to be adjusted.

Zero-day vulnerability intel—brought to you by Cisco Talos 

Another new addition to the Kenna.VM platform is zero-day vulnerability intelligence powered by Cisco Talos. Talos regularly identifies high-priority security vulnerabilities in commonly used operating systems and software. The team works with vendors to disclose more than 200 vulnerabilities every year.  

This new integration with Talos gives Kenna.VM users access to information on zero-day vulnerabilities documented by the Talos research team (and likely to be in their environment). With the “Zero Days” filter in Kenna.VM, users can isolate zero-day vulnerabilities, investigate, and take action leveraging Snort rule IDs provided by Talos, when applicable (Figure 3).

Vulnerability intelligence—your way 

The last (but certainly not least) piece of the Kenna.VM Premier puzzle is the inclusion of Kenna’s recently enhanced vulnerability intelligence User Interface and API. Kenna is known for its risk scoring, but what people may not realize is just how much data we consume and turn into finished, actionable intelligence. There are more than 18+ threat and exploit intelligence feeds that power our understanding of vulnerabilities, and our vulnerability intel API and UI make of this information available to customers. 

The UI provides a dashboard to research any CVE—regardless of whether or not a scanner found that vulnerability in the customer’s environment. Meanwhile, the API allows customers to query Kenna and export as much of our vulnerability intelligence on as many vulnerabilities as they wish, and use that data to enrich any existing IT, dev or security workflows, including Cisco’s very own SecureX. The data in this set includes descriptions, publication dates, CVSS data, available exploits and fixes, insight into remote exploitable vulnerabilities, and much more. Also provided is the Kenna Risk Score for each vulnerability and an indication of whether it is predicted to be exploitable—unique data points derived by Kenna’s data science.

This intelligence, combined with our new remediation scoring and Talos zero-day intelligence, rounds out the Kenna.VM Premier tier as the ideal package for any customer or prospect who is looking to take their vulnerability management program to the next stage of maturity.

Kenna.VM Premier is available today. If you’re interested in learning more, contact your sales representatives or send us a demo request to unlock the next level of your vulnerability management journey.

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